Tweet

When we listen to recorded CDs he barely
looks up, chewing his bone
studiously, as if this would be the last to come his way,
or drowsily spreads himself out at my feet,
half waiting, half dreaming that he’s about to be scratched

“Listen to the music, dog. It’s beautiful,”
I say, but he barely moves.
Interestingly he doesn’t react at all to the classics,
like Mozart or Beethoven, however vociferous the passage,
though he is quick with a bark, or a nose-to-glass
inquiring look, to a giggling child, or a runner going past outside;

But to this, eyes wide and ablaze, to a sonata for flute and piano
by Wierekie, a German composer, practically unknown,
he up-jumped, as if ready to fly, flamboyant, aroused,
reacting instantaneously to the sound of tweets,

and even cuddled-up to the CD player
as though it had need be turned up
even louder, as though the tweeting sounds
were a flock of fluttery birds,
settling socially, congregationally, on the trees outside.

Perhaps there is a better conclusion
to which we may come,
that it is not a matter of music perceived,
but rather, a preferential difference in taste.

Just you give him a pen he can use,
with a paw,
a keyboard that lights to a tongue.
An evocation of true talent will flower;
and a wondrous woof-art will tower.

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